The Negotiator Read online

  Later there was more money, and improvements were made and some extensions added. When he first came to the White House and said he wished to spend his vacations at Nantucket, a minor hurricane descended on the old home. Experts arrived from Washington, looked in horror at the lack of space, the lack of security, of communications. ... They came back and said yes, Mr. President, that would be fine; they would just have to build quarters for a hundred Secret Service men, fix a helicopter pad, several cottages for visitors, secretaries, and household staff—there was no way Myra Cormack could continue to make the beds herself—oh, and maybe a satellite dish or two for the communications people. ... President Cormack had called the whole thing off.

  Then, that November, he had taken a gamble with the man from Moscow, inviting Mikhail Gorbachev up to Nantucket for a long weekend. And the Russian had loved it.

  His KGB heavies had been as distraught as the Secret Service men, but both leaders were adamant. The two men, wrapped against the knifing wind off Nantucket Sound (the Russian had brought a sable fur shapka for the American), took long walks along the beaches while KGB and Secret Service men plodded after them, others hid in the sere grass and muttered into communicators, a helicopter clawed its way through the winds above them, and a Coast Guard cutter pitched and plunged offshore.

  No one tried to kill anybody. The two men strolled into Nantucket town unannounced and the fishermen at Straight Wharf showed them their fresh-caught lobsters and scallops. Gorbachev admired the catch and twinkled and beamed, and then they had a beer together at a dockside bar and walked back to Shawkemo, looking side by side like a bulldog and a stork.

  At night, after steamed lobsters in the frame house, the defense experts from each side joined them and the interpreters, and they worked out the last points of principle and drafted their communiqué.

  On Tuesday the press was allowed in—there had always been a token force pooling pictures and words, for after all this was America, but on Tuesday the massed battalions arrived. At noon the two men emerged onto the wooden veranda and the President read the communiqué. It announced the firm intention to put before the Central Committee and the Senate a wide-ranging and radical agreement to cut back conventional forces across the board and across the world. There were still some verification problems to be ironed out, a job for the technicians, and the specific details of what types of weaponry and how much were to be decommissioned, mothballed, scrapped, or aborted would be announced later. President Cormack spoke of peace with honor, peace with security, and peace with good will. Secretary Gorbachev nodded vigorously as the translation came through. No one mentioned then, though the press did later and at great length, that with the U.S. budget deficit, the Soviet economic chaos, and a looming oil crisis, neither superpower could finally afford a continuing arms race.

  Two thousand miles away in Houston, Cyrus V. Miller switched off the television and stared at Scanlon.

  “That man is going to strip us naked,” he said with quiet venom. “That man is dangerous. That man is a traitor.”

  He recovered himself and strode to the desk intercom.

  “Louise, would you send in Colonel Easterhouse now, please.”

  Someone once said: All men dream, but they are most dangerous who dream with their eyes open. Colonel Robert Easterhouse sat in the elegant reception room atop the Pan-Global Building and stared at the window and the panoramic view of Houston. But his pale-blue eyes saw the vaulted sky and ocher sands of the Nejd and he dreamed of controlling the income from the Hasa oil fields for the benefit of America and all mankind.

  Born in 1945, he was three when his father accepted a teaching job at the American University in Beirut. The Lebanese capital had been a paradise in those days, elegant, cosmopolitan, rich, and safe. He had attended an Arab school for a while, had French and Arab playmates; by the time the family returned to Idaho he was thirteen and trilingual in English, French, and Arabic.

  Back in America the youth had found his schoolmates shallow, frivolous, and stunningly ignorant, obsessed by rock ‘n’ roll and a young singer called Presley. They mocked his tales of swaying cedars, Crusader forts, and the plumes of the Druse campfires drifting through the Chouf mountain passes. So he was driven to books, and none more than The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Lawrence of Arabia. At eighteen, forsaking college and the girls back home, he volunteered for the 82nd Airborne. He was still at boot camp when Kennedy died.

  For ten years he had been a paratrooper, with three tours in Vietnam, coming out with the last forces in 1973. Men can acquire fast promotion when casualties are high and he was the 82nd’s youngest colonel when he was crippled, not in war but in a stupid accident. It had been a training drop in the desert; the DZ was supposed to be flat and sandy, the winds a breeze at five knots. As usual the brass had got it wrong. The wind was thirty-plus at ground level; the men were smashed into rocks and gullies. Three dead, twenty-seven injured.

  The X-ray plates later showed the bones in Easterhouse’s left leg like a box of matches scattered on black velvet. He watched the embarrassing scuttle of the last U.S. forces out of the embassy in Saigon—Bunker’s bunker, as he knew it from the Tet offensive—on a hospital TV in 1975. While in the hospital he chanced on a book about computers and realized that these machines were the road to power: a way to correct the madnesses of the world and bring order and sanity to chaos and anarchy, if properly used.

  Quitting the military, he went to college and majored in computer science, joined Honeywell for three years, and moved to IBM. It was 1981, the petrodollar power of the Saudis was at its peak, Aramco had hired IBM to construct for them foolproof computer systems to monitor production, flow, exportation, and above all royalty dues throughout their monopoly operation in Saudi Arabia. With fluent Arabic and a genius for computers, Easterhouse was a natural. He spent five years protecting Aramco’s interests in Saudi, coming to specialize in computer-monitored security systems against fraud and theft. In 1986, with the collapse of the OPEC cartel, the power shifted back to the consumers; and the Saudis felt exposed. They head-hunted the limping computer genius who spoke their language and knew their customs, paying him a fortune to go free-lance and work for them instead of IBM and Aramco.

  He knew the country and its history like a native. Even as a boy he had thrilled to the written tales of the Founder, the dispossessed nomadic Sheikh Abdal Aziz al Sa’ud, sweeping out of the desert to storm the Musmak Fortress at Riyadh and begin his march to power. He had marveled at the astuteness of Abdal Aziz as he spent thirty years conquering the thirty-seven tribes of the interior, uniting the Nejd to the Hejaz to the Hadhramaut, marrying the daughters of his vanquished enemies and binding the tribes into a nation—or the semblance of one.

  Then Easterhouse saw the reality, and admiration turned to disillusion, contempt, and loathing. His job with IBM had involved preventing and detecting computer fraud in systems devised by unworldly whiz kids from the States, monitoring the translation of operational oil production into accounting language and ultimately bank balances, creating foolproof systems that could also be integrated with the Saudi treasury setup. It was the profligacy and the dizzying corruption that turned his basically puritan spirit to a conviction that one day he would become the instrument that would sweep away the result of a freak accident of fate which had given such huge wealth and power to such a people; it would be he who would restore order and correct the mad imbalances of the Middle East, so that this God-given gift of oil would be used first for the service of the Free World and then for all the peoples of the world.

  He could have used his skills to skim a vast fortune for himself from the oil revenues, as the princes did, but his morality forbade him. So to fulfill his dream he would need the support of powerful men, backup, funding. And then he had been summoned by Cyrus Miller to bring down the corrupt edifice and deliver it to America. Now, all he had to do was persuade these barbarian Texans that he was their man.

  “Colonel Easterhouse?” He wa
s interrupted by the honeyed tones of Louise. “Mr. Miller will see you now, sir.”

  He rose, leaned on his cane for a few seconds till the pain eased, then followed her into Miller’s office. He greeted Miller respectfully and was introduced to Scanlon. Miller came straight to the point.

  “Colonel, I would like my friend and colleague here to be convinced, as I am, of the feasibility of your concept. I respect his judgment and would like him to be involved with us.”

  Scanlon appreciated the compliment. Easterhouse spotted that it was a lie. Miller did not respect Scanlon’s judgment, but they would both need Scanlon’s ships, covertly used to import the needed weaponry for the coup d’état.

  “You read my report, sir?” Easterhouse asked Scanlon.

  “That bit about the Hez-Boll-Ah guys, yes. Heavy stuff, lot of funny names. How do you think you can use them to bring down the monarchy? And more important, deliver the Hasa oil fields to America?”

  “Mr. Scanlon, you cannot control the Hasa oil fields and direct their product to America unless you first control the government in Riyadh, hundreds of miles away. That government must be changed into a puppet regime, wholly, ruled by its American advisers. America cannot topple the House of Sa’ud openly—Arab reaction would be impossible. My plan is to provoke a small group of Shi’ah Fundamentalists, dedicated to Holy Terror, to carry out the act. The idea that Khomeinists have come to control the Saudi peninsula would send waves of panic throughout the entire Arab world. From Oman in the south, up through the Emirates to Kuwait, from Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Israel would come immediately overt or covert pleas to America to intervene to save them all from Holy Terror.

  “Because I have been setting up a computerized Saudi internal security system for two years, I am aware that such a group of Holy Terror fanatics exists, headed by an Imam who regards the King, his group of brothers—the inner Mafia known as the Al-Fahd—and the entire family of three thousand princelings who make up the dynasty, with pathological loathing. The Imam has publicly denounced them all as the Whores of Islam, Defilers of the Holy Places of Mecca and Medina. He has had to go into hiding, but I can keep him safe until we need him by erasing all news of his whereabouts from the central computer. Also, I have a contact with him—a disenchanted member of the Mutawain, the ubiquitous and hated Religious Police.”

  “But what’s the point in handing over Saudi Arabia to these yo-yos?” demanded Scanlon. “With Saudi’s pending income of three hundred million U.S. dollars a day—hell, they’d wreak absolute havoc.”

  “Precisely. Which the Arab world itself could not tolerate. Every state in the area excepting Iran would appeal to America to intervene. Washington would be under massive pressure to fly the Rapid Deployment Force into its prepared base in Oman, on the Musandam Peninsula, and thence into Riyadh, the capital, and Dhahran and Bahrein, to secure the oil fields before they could be destroyed forever. Then we’d have to stay to prevent its ever happening again.”

  “And this Imam guy,” asked Scanlon. “What happens to him?”

  “He dies,” said Easterhouse calmly, “to be replaced by the one princeling of the House who was not present at the massacre, because he was abducted to my house in time to avoid it. I know him well—he’s Western educated, pro-American, weak, vacillating, and a drunk. But he will legitimize the other Arab appeals by one of his own, by radio from our embassy in Riyadh. As the sole surviving member of the dynasty, he can appeal for America to intervene to restore legitimacy. Then he’ll be our man forever.”

  Scanlon thought it over. He reverted to type.

  “What’s in it for us? I don’t mean the U.S.A. I mean us!”

  Miller intervened. He knew Scanlon and how he would react.

  “Mel, if this prince rules in Riyadh and is advised every waking moment of the day by the colonel here, we are looking at the breaking of the Aramco monopoly. We are looking at new contracts, shipping, importing, refining. And guess who’s at the head of the line?”

  Scanlon nodded his assent. “When do you plan to schedule this ... event?”

  “You may know that the storming of the Musmak Fortress was in January 1902; the declaration of the new kingdom was in 1932,” said Easterhouse. “Fifteen months from now, in the spring of 1992, the King and his court will celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of the first and the diamond jubilee of the kingdom. They are planning a vast billion-dollar jamboree before a world audience. The new covered stadium is being built. I am in charge of all its computer-governed security systems—gates, doors, windows, air conditioning. A week before the great night there will be a full dress rehearsal attended by the leading six hundred members of the House of Sa’ud, drawn from every corner of the world. That is when I will arrange for the Holy Terrorists to strike. The doors will be computer-locked with them inside; the five hundred soldiers of the Royal Guard will be issued defective ammunition, imported, along with the submachine carbines needed by the Hezb’Allah to do the job, in your ships.”

  “And when it’s over?” asked Scanlon.

  “When it’s over, Mr. Scanlon, there will be no House of Sa’ud left. Nor of the terrorists. The stadium will catch fire and the cameras will continue rolling until meltdown. Then the new ayatollah, the self-styled Living Imam, inheritor of the spirit and soul of Khomeini, will go on television and announce his plans to the world, which has just seen what happened in the stadium. That, I’m certain, will start the appeals to Washington.”

  “Colonel,” said Cyrus Miller, “how much funding will you need?”

  “To begin advance planning immediately, one million dollars. Later, two million for foreign purchases and hard-currency bribes. Inside Saudi Arabia—nothing. I can obtain a fund of local riyals amounting to several billion to cover all internal purchasing and palm-greasing.”

  Miller nodded. The strange visionary was asking peanuts for what he intended to do.

  “I will see that you get it, Colonel. Now, would you mind waiting outside for a little while? I’d like you to come and have dinner at my house when I’m done.”

  As Colonel Easterhouse turned to go he paused in the doorway.

  “There is, or might be, one problem. The only ungovernable factor I can perceive. President Cormack seems to be a man dedicated to peace and, from what I observed at Nantucket, now dedicated to a new treaty with the Kremlin. That treaty would probably not survive our takeover of the Saudi peninsula. Such a man might even refuse to send in the Rapid Deployment Force.”

  When he had gone, Scanlon swore, drawing a frown from Miller.

  “He could be right, you know, Cy. God, if only Odell were in the White House.”

  Although personally chosen by Cormack as his running mate, Vice President Michael Odell was also a Texan, a businessman, a self-made millionaire, and much farther to the right than Cormack. Miller, possessed by unusual passion, turned and gripped Scanlon by the shoulders.

  “Mel, I have prayed to the Lord over that man—many, many times. And I asked for a sign. And with this colonel and what he just said, He has given me that sign. Cormack has got to go.”

  Just north of the gambling capital of Las Vegas in Nevada lies the huge sprawl of Nellis Air Force Range, where gambling is definitely not on the agenda. For the 11,274-acre base broods over the United States’ most secret weapons-testing range, the Tonopah Test Range, where any stray private aircraft penetrating its 3,012,770 acres of test-ground during a test is likely to be given one warning and then shot down.

  It was here, on a bright crisp morning in December 1990, that two groups of men disembarked from a convoy of limousines to witness the first testing and demonstration of a revolutionary new weapon. The first group comprised the manufacturers of the multi-launch rocket vehicle, which was the base of the system, and they were accompanied by men from the two associated corporations who had built the rockets and the electronics/avionics programs incorporated in the weapon. Like most modern hardware, Despot, the ultimate tank-destroyer, was not a
simple device but involved a net of complex systems that in this case had come from three separate corporations.

  Peter Cobb was chief executive officer and major shareholder in Zodiac AFV, Inc., a company specializing in armored fighting vehicles—hence the initials in its name. For him personally, and for his company, which had developed Despot at their own expense over seven years, everything hung on the weapon’s being accepted and bought by the Pentagon. He had little doubt; Despot was years ahead of Boeing’s Pave Tiger system and the newer Tacit Rainbow. He knew it responded completely to an abiding concern of NATO planners—isolating the first wave of any Soviet tank attack across the central German plain from the second wave.

  His colleagues were Lionel Moir of Pasadena Avionics in California, who had built the Kestrel and Goshawk components, and Ben Salkind of ECK Industries, Inc., in the Silicon Valley near Palo Alto, California. These men also had crucial personal as well as corporate stakes in the adoption of Despot by the Pentagon. ECK Industries had a slice of the prototype-stage B2 Stealth bomber for the Air Force, but this was an assured project.

  The Pentagon team arrived two hours later, when everything was set up. There were twelve of them, including two generals, and they comprised the technical group whose recommendation would be vital to the Pentagon decision. When they were all seated under the awning in front of the battery of TV screens, the test began.